Sunday, February 24, 2013

I gather from a newspaper report today that the UK government has decreed (in its usual self-effacing manner) that an independent Scotland would be 'banned' from possessing nuclear weapons. So let's recap on what we now know -

1) Nuclear weapons will be forbidden in an independent Scotland.

2) Nuclear weapons will be compulsory in a non-independent Scotland.

So what on earth is an anti-nuclear weapons country like Scotland supposed to do in its forthcoming referendum on independence? I think I speak on behalf of all of us in begging the (admittedly brilliant) UK government strategists to stop torturing us with these impossible dilemmas.

Will it be the same people that banned India and Pakistan and Israel for example?

Will the same people ban England from having these weapons?

How on earth have Iceland, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Sweden and Ireland managed all these years without nuclear weapons?

Incidentally, once we are independent, if "someone" says we are banned, and that England is not banned, from possessing WMDs, will the English get their leaking nuclear submarines out of our water within hours?

We wouldn't want to get into trouble with whoever it is that will ban us from having nuclear weapons, would we?